PRICE:
Frommer's Exceptional

Tetsuya's was named the fifth-best restaurant in the world in Restaurant Magazine's annual list of the world's 50 best eateries in 2007, and was the Sydney Morning Herald's Good Food Guide's Restaurant of the Year in 2008. So what makes Tetsuya's so good? On a recent visit, I secured a table right next to the floor-to-ceiling windows with intimate views across a Japanese-inspired courtyard of maples and waterfalls. I chose the wine-matching option to go with my 10 courses, in my opinion the best thing to do here. (Corkage costs A$20/US$18/£9 if you bring your own wine, and the tasting option means you get to try 10 good wines, several made especially to complement Tetsuya's dishes.) The matching wine option costs $85 (US$76/£38) per head. The service was impeccable, and the food truly inspired. Small delicate morsels appeared: an incredible shot of pea soup with bitter chocolate sorbet was first, followed by a roulette of chopped smoked ocean trout capped with caviar, then a leek and spanner crab custard. Then came the signature dish: a confit of Tasmanian ocean trout with a crust of konbu seaweed, on a bed of daikon radish and fennel. From this taste of air and sea, the culinary journey went on, to thick dark forests heady with mushrooms, veal, and red wine. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. (The final result, unfortunately, was a bill in excess of A$600/US$540/£270 for two.) Everybody who is anybody wants to come here -- so getting a table is difficult. To have a chance, you need to book when reservations become available, 4 weeks in advance, and reconfirm a few days before.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Australia 2009, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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